Baxter Dury

The Night Chancers

Of course this is a great record. Of course this is essential listening. At this point in his career he’s still getting better, and that’s a scary proposition.

While Dury may be referencing specific targets for his words, there’s a level of ambiguity that makes each and every one of The Night Chancers relative by association to the listener.

Dury has always been a distinctive voice, but here he seems to have found a new clarity, not just in the timbre of his tone, but also in the world he draws with it.

Alongside its pleasing soundtrack of French pop, electronica and disco, Baxter Dury has settled on a unique formula that works.

Dury is a bit of a wordsmith, but in a way that doesn’t alienate anyone. It’s matter-of-fact, anti-intellectual even. Above anything else, Dury shows us that a little bit of melody and a lot of honesty can go a long way.

A master of eulogising the grubby underbelly, Baxter’s is the kind of voice that’s utterly out of step with the modern, fearful, social media-courting world, and all the better for it.

It seems safe to say that records as good as this prove that Baxter has arrived with a voice and sound of his own.

Shunning big hooks and choruses, the indie raconteur turns his hand to immaculate character studies of life’s losers.

With a voice that embodies moderately priced red wine and late, late nights, Dury is one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary British oddball-pop.

A set of seductive, atmospheric late-night grooves on which Dury conjures sinister vignettes of insomniac dwellers of the wee small hours.

Though filmic in its scope, these 10 vignettes are economically plotted (the album is just 30 minutes long), with a through-line that takes you just far enough before leaving you to your own conclusions about these characters’ motives.